He Came After I Died

I waited for death to take me.

No reaper came.

No silver gate opened.

No ancient wolf spirit howled my name.

Instead, footsteps sounded in the corridor.

Slow.

Uneven.

Familiar.

I turned.

Cyren stopped outside my cell.

He did not look in.

He stood with his back to the bars, shoulders stiff beneath a dark cloak.

For a long while, he did nothing.

Then he exhaled as if breathing hurt.

“Aeron,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

I moved closer.

Of course I could hear him.

I was dead, not deaf.

He still did not turn around.

“Do you hate me?”

The question struck harder than the shard had.

Hate him?

I had spent months feeding on hatred because it was the only warmth left in that cell.

I hated him when the guards laughed.

I hated him when I dreamed of birds.

I hated him when the chains cut into my wrists.

I hated him most when I remembered he had once held those same wrists gently while rubbing medicine into training wounds.

“Yes,” I tried to say.

No sound came.

Cyren lowered his head.

“Today it snowed,” he whispered. “I thought… perhaps I could take you out to see it.”

I stared at him.

Was this a joke?

His wedding drums had just stopped above us.

Should he not be in a candlelit chamber with his bride? Should he not be drinking sweet wine, accepting blessings, pretending he had never known the man bleeding behind him?

I drifted around him until I could see his face.

He looked terrible.

Paler than I remembered.

His lips were cracked. His eyes were rimmed red, as if he had not slept for days.

No wedding robes.

No gold circlet.

No joy.

Only a grief so naked I almost looked away.

But why would he grieve?

He had won.

I looked back toward the cell.

My body lay only a few steps behind him.

If he turned, he would see it.

He did not turn.

He could not bear to look at me even now.

I felt something inside my ghost chest twist.

Cyren sank slowly to the floor outside the bars.

The hem of his cloak touched the dirty stone.

He had always hated filth.

As children, he used to scold me for tracking mud into the study.

Now he sat in a dungeon without complaint.

“Aeron,” he said again, voice barely audible. “I went to Lyria a few days ago.”

Lyria.

The southern water city.

Pear blossoms, narrow canals, sugar shops glowing at dusk.

I had once told him that if I survived long enough to grow old, I would open a candy shop there.

“Did you buy sweets for your bride?” I asked, though he could not hear.

I reached toward his waist pouch out of old habit.

When we were young, Cyren always carried sweets for me.

He claimed he bought too many and needed help finishing them.

Later, I discovered the truth.

He traveled through counties tasting candies himself, though he hated sugar, just to find which ones I would like.

He made himself sick for three days doing it once.

I called him foolish.

He told me waste was shameful.

I believed him because I wanted to.

My hand passed through his pouch.

Ghosts could not steal candy.

Unfair.

Cyren opened the pouch himself.

In his palm lay a pear blossom pastry.

I leaned close and took a pretend bite.

Bitter.

I spat it out instinctively, though there was nothing to spit.

How could pear blossom pastry taste bitter?

Had death ruined sweetness?

Cyren lifted the pastry to his lips and bit down.

He chewed once.

Twice.

Then tears fell onto his hand.

“Aeron,” he whispered, “the sugar is bitter.”

I froze.

He was crying.

Cyren Vale, who had stood calm before kings, war councils, and execution orders, was crying over a pastry.

I reached for his face.

My fingers passed through the tear sliding down his cheek.

I remembered another bitter sweet.

Hollowmere.

The border city the king abandoned.

The child who died in my arms after I failed to save him.

He had pressed a melted candy into my palm and said,

“Eat this, brother. Sweet things make pain smaller.”

That candy had tasted like ash.

I had blamed Cyren for Hollowmere too.

He had drugged my water and dragged me from the city before the enemy breached the gates.

When I woke, Hollowmere had fallen.

He told me the king had ordered retreat.

I called him coward.

Traitor.

Dog of the crown.

He accepted every word.

Only later did I learn he had carried me unconscious through enemy lines while bleeding from an arrow wound in his side.

Still, grief needs somewhere to go.

I gave mine to him.

He never gave it back.